11th century government official Sugawara Akitada discovers an abandoned, mute boy, and seeks his family while his faithful servant Tora tries to deal with the loss of his new bride to a powerful man. Eventually their two quests overlap.

Akitada is on his way to the bedside of his dying mother when bad weather forces him to take refuge in a temple whose central treasure is a brilliantly painted hell screen. Perhaps its violent imagery influences his dreams: that night he is awakened by a terrible scream. It's only after Akitada returns to his family and a scene of domestic unhappiness and scandal that the significance of that cry becomes clear. For while he slept, a woman was murdered,...

When the exiled Prince Okisada, the most illustrious prisoner of the penal colony on Sado Island, is poisoned, Sugawara Akitada is called upon by the emperor's envoys to investigate incognito. The accused murderer is the son of the governor of the island, but Akitada suspects greater treachery. Posing as a prisoner, Akitada discovers a deadly conspiracy, only to fall into the hands of brutal guards and disappear. It falls to Tora, Akitada's devoted...